In the photolithography process, which is one of the processes for manufacturing micro-devices such as semiconductor devices or liquid crystal display devices, an exposure apparatus that projection-exposes a pattern formed on a mask onto a photosensitive substrate is used. Such an exposure apparatus has a mask stage that supports a mask and a substrate stage that supports a substrate and, while successively moving the mask stage and the substrate stage, exposes the pattern of the mask onto the substrate via a projection optical system. In manufacturing micro-devices, miniaturization of the pattern formed on a substrate is required in order to make such micro-devices high-density ones. To address this requirement, it is desired that the exposure apparatus have a still higher resolution; as a means for realizing such a still higher resolution, such a liquid immersion exposure apparatus as disclosed in the patent document 1, below, in which exposure processes are performed in a state that the space between a projection optical system and a substrate is filled with a liquid having a higher refractive index compared with gases, has been devised.    Patent Document 1: PCT International Publication WO 99/49504.